South Korea and the US have much to discuss

The complex’s shutdown, triggered by tensions over North Korea’s third nuclear test in February and the South Korean-US responses, should be a reminder of precarious regional security for presidents Park Geun-hye and Barack Obama, who are holding talks in Washington. Undoubtedly, North Korea under Kim Jong-un – a young, inexperienced and unpredictable leader – will be placed at the top of the summit agenda.

True, tensions are easing as South Korea and the US have ended their joint military manoeuvres and North Korea has stopped using warlike rhetoric. But South Korea cannot afford to rule out the possibility of North Korea resorting to unprovoked hostilities, as it did when it torpedoed a South Korean warship and shelled a South Korean island in 2010.

North Korea’s use of conventional weapons is not the only threat to stability in Northeast Asia. The threat from its nuclear ambitions is no less grave. All stakeholders – China, Japan and Russia, as well as South Korea and the US – are pushing for denuclearisation to little avail, with North Korea demanding that it be treated as a nuclear weapons state, while it threatens a nuclear attack on the US.

A challenge the wayward North Korea is posing to Park and Obama is how to persuade it to give up its nuclear weapons programme and take a path to building an economy capable of feeding its population on its own. Against this backdrop, Park is bringing her initiative for solving the problem to her talks with Obama.

Her idea, dubbed the “Korean Peninsular process of trust building”, envisions a three-stage approach in assisting North Korea – for starters, providing humanitarian aid with no strings attached, supporting the North’s agricultural, forestation and other low-cost projects as the next step, and, finally, making large-scale investments in a denuclearised North Korea’s dilapidated social and economic infrastructure.

Park will have to win over Obama if she wishes to avoid any stumbling block to launching her initiative. Caution and diplomatic skill will be demanded of her in briefing Obama on her North Korea initiative. Policy coordination with the US will be derailed if Obama, who has repeatedly promised not to reward bad behaviour, remains sceptical about change in North Korea.

A reminder in this regard is a conflict witnessed between a pro-active Kim Dae-jung, who advocated a “Sunshine Policy” on North Korea, and a distrusting George W Bush, who included the North in the “axis of evil”. Moreover, there is basically no big difference between Kim’s “Sunshine Policy” and Park’s “Korean Peninsular” process of trust building, with both aimed at making a peaceful coexistence, if not immediate reunification, possible by helping North Korea pull itself out of abject poverty.

Another nuclear issue that needs to be addressed at the Park-Obama summit is South Korea’s demand for permission to enrich uranium for greater self-sufficiency in nuclear fuel and to reprocess spent fuel whose management is in imminent crisis. Ahead of the summit, Seoul and Washington agreed to extend the existing South Korean-US nuclear accord – which does not allow such activities – and was originally set to expire next year, by two years.

But extended expiry was nothing but a stopgap designed to remove a potential source of conflict at the summit. Park and Obama are urged to deal squarely with the South Korean demand and agree on a framework for future negotiations on the revision of the bilateral nuclear accord, which are set to be conducted every three months from June.

In addition to the issues of immediate concern, the rise of nationalism in Japan should be included on the summit agenda. At a time when many of the East Asian countries are involved in territorial disputes, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is adding fuel to regional conflicts not just by attempting to whitewash Japan’s wartime atrocities but by denying that “invasion” has a clear definition – an act aimed at watering down its use of force for colonial occupation. Park needs to remind Obama of the impact Japan’s nationalist tilt would have on regional stability.